December 15, 2012

Here's a video, "Amelia (Terni) - Borghi d'Italia (Tv2000)" which shows the town's ancient walls, the archaeological museum, the medieval traditions, and features local residents, including the bronze statue of Germanicus.

Highlights include the double organ so designed that a priest and a cloistered nun could play the keyboards at the same time; the monsignor of the duomo dedicated to Saints Fermina and Olympiades; and the theatre of Amelia. Of course, a story about this ancient town wouldn't be complete without a few shots of some of the retired men hanging outside the Porto Romano.

December 13, 2012

The second Provenance Research Training Program workshop is scheduled for March 10-15, 2013, in Zagreb, Croatia.

"This an international workshop is open to scholars, students, professionals, collectors, dealers, and anyone interested in subjects related to cultural plunder, the ethics of collection management, cultural rights and heritages, as well as methodologies of research and analysis into the ownership histories of cultural objects misappropriated during mass conflicts," according to Marc Masurovsky, director of the program.

The inaugural workshop of the Provenance Research Training Program was held June 10-15, 2012 in Magdeburg, Germany, with the co-sponsorship of the Koordinierungsstelle für Kulturgutverluste (Coordination Office for Lost Cultural Assets), a public institution jointly financed by the Federal Government of Germany and all the German Länder (States) and housed within the Ministry of Cultural Affairs in the Land of Saxony-Anhalt in Magdeburg. Please see the Report on the Magdeburg Workshop.

The deadline for applications for the March 2013 workshop in Zagreb, Croatia, is January 4, 2013.

Here's a link to the website for more information: http://provenanceresearch.org/prtp/schedule.

Even as cultural property faces immediate peril today in conflict zones like Syria and Mali, there is anecdotal evidence that some nations are awakening to the diplomatic and foreign policy benefits that can flow from the repatriation of cultural patrimony.

While on a different scale from World War II, historic structures, religious monuments, and other priceless antiquities continue to suffer collateral damage and exploitation in armed conflict. Antiquities have been stolen, smuggled and sold in what is a reported multibillion dollar underground market. They have become the illicit prizes of private collectors and the subject of legal claims against museums.

So it goes in Syria, where wartime damage to World Heritage Sites, such as Krak des Chevaliers, seems intractable. In northern Mali, too, religious strife has brought ruin to centuries-old, historic shrines in Timbuktu. Where is the constructive potential of cultural property?

December 7, 2012

TF —We’re here at Forum d’Avignon where we’ve all been discussing culture
as a source of hope. What excites you most about ICOM’s activities at present
and what gives you most hope and optimism for the future?

GA — What gives me a lot of hope is
that ICOM has tried to lead from the front, and from the bottom up, engaging
museum professionals, and particularly in those areas involving the youth
because they are the future of museums and heritage, and culture in general.
ICOM has systematically made sure that where it has initiatives and programmes,
where it has meetings, young people can begin to get involved. That is the
first thing. The second is the ICOM Code of Ethics, which stipulates how we
need to act together and negotiate and move forward on what we can do. The
third is setting up these mediation teams where institutions don’t have to
quarrel over things but can go through the mediation process with professional
mediators, allowing them to discuss amongst themselves and agree on issues. And
the same things I’ve been discussing with you can be taken through this
mediation process. So to me that is very important. Speaking on an intellectual
level as an academic, and referring to the production of intellectual material,
ICOM has done that too. The only problem is that it lacks in peer review and
that is something some of us have been arguing for because ICOM has a great
body of intellectual potential and we could use that. We need to
intellectualize our products, to generate more peer-reviewed material using our
human resources as a network. It is taking place but we can do better. Lastly
ICOM has been flexible enough to guide the development of museums from temples
of heritage to community spaces, so it is not rigid. If you look at ICOM as an
institution, compared with other bodies it really has embraced this idea of
community as a bottom-up approach. I think that is very powerful. It has given
museums a direction to enable them to engage with their communities, to open up
museums as places of dialogue and as places where communities feel at home. And
also to allow museums, indeed to encourage museums in different parts of the
world to develop alongside the community’s way of living, of believing, the way
the society looks at itself. When you go to Africa, the museum since the 1990s
has developed in a very different way, so it is a place of meeting, it is a
community centre, a place of dialogue, where you can talk politics. It is the
only place that is open to the public in a very fresh way. To me that issue of diversity that is
embraced within ICOM is very important.

TF — Is this your first Forum d’Avignon?

GA — Yes, it’s my first forum and I’ve
been enjoying it. I think it’s a fantastic event and I look forward to many
more. Over the last two days I have seen how it’s moving on. I think because
it’s in Avignon it is very French...

TF — Quintessentially French.

GA — Yes, it’s very French! But I hope that in future they will bring in even more
people. They are talking about 42 different nations. It will have to be able to
move to embrace those voices. I would have liked to hear what is happening in
South America, what is happening in Africa. Africa is the emerging economy, the
future of the world, the continent of the future. It is where things are taking
place. People are talking about mobile phones here, Africa is where the
majority of mobile phones are sold, where communication is moving so fast and I
would have liked, when we are talking about culture, not to box it so that
European culture is the main thing that needs to exported out, but that we look
at other areas, particularly on the issue of diversity. There is no better
place to talk about this than here because the whole of West Africa is more or
less French. And Asia too. So it will take time, but I’d like to see us move
away from the Eurocentric way of looking at culture to a much more globalized
way of approaching it. But I’m very happy that we have been looking at culture
in terms of innovation, in terms of digital technology, in terms of diversity,
and in terms of hope. I’m very happy about that but I’d like to see it opened
up to embrace other perspectives because we can learn a lot from the diversity
of other cultures.

TF — Why do you think the African art
market has not emerged in the same way that, for example, the Chinese art
market has, or the Indian art market, or the Russian and Middle East art
markets have? After all, Africa has produced great art.

GA — Africa does make fantastic art,
but Africa is very busy with other things! We are still trying to find out what
resources we have. We have oil, we have uranium...Kenya has oil, Uganda is now
producing oil. Every part of Africa has mineral resources coming out if its
ears, so there is a second scramble for Africa taking place. And of course the
Chinese are there and the Indians are doing things, but Western Europe is
finding itself late in this second
scramble for the continent. So I think Africa is trying to manage that before
it goes into other things. Everybody is positioning themselves, but everyone
talks about Africa as the future continent or the future in terms of the
economic scramble. But I think culture is still being left on the side, which I
think is a mistake because it should go hand-in-hand. We should use culture to
manage those resources that are coming out. It is not that I am approving of
what is happening now. I’m actually disapproving because this is the time to
use our culture to manage the developments that are being driven by the new
resources that are emerging out of the continent. Africa now is able to choose.
As a continent, and its various countries, they don’t have to go to Washington
to kneel to the IMF or the World Bank. The Chinese will give them money if
those guys refuse, so there are choices now. There are resources, but if we
don’t manage them now, using our heritage and our culture, we will regret it.

TF —So you’re reinforcing what has been said here at Forum d’Avignon this
week, that culture should not be marginalized but should be placed right at the
centre of economic activity?

GA — It should be central, but it
should also to some extent dictate development because if you don’t do it your
way someone else will do it their way and then, by the time you realise it,
suddenly it will be too late and that could be a problem for Africa. That is
why I’d like to hear more critical analysis at forums like this of how things
are happening in Africa and how they could happen better, especially now that
these new resources are coming in.

TF —So we should be pushing for greater African representation at Forum
d’Avignon next year and in future years?

GA — Yes, that would be fantastic but
not only Africa; there is also South America, and Asia, which is developing
very fast, as well as the Pacific and other places. But Africa does deserve
more critical analysis because we are the continent that still has the raw
resources. We have to develop them in the right way, using our various cultures
as central to that process. And of course the museum is part of that process too.

TF — If the original acquisition involved
intense violence or things were taken as a part of the subjugation of another
culture — as was the case with Benin in 1897 — is that not a justification for
thinking again about those objects?

GA — The Benin question is very
complex.The first thing we need to
accept about the museums that own those Benin collections is to come out and
say: ‘Yes, we know these things were taken under those circumstances; we know
the Benin kingdom, the Benin royal family, they still exist even if they are
not as powerful as they were; we know there are contestations, we know there
are claims’. How are we going to satisfy this after all the changes that have
taken place? Even if you took it back, who are you going to give it to? Are you
going to give it back to the kings? Are you going to give it back to the
Nigerian government? Who are you going to return it to? These are issues that
need to be discussed. They have been through so many hands, how are we going to
trace them back? But these questions do not give you immunity against
discussion. You cannot even talk about compensation because these things were
done in the late nineteenth century. It was an attack, it was looting, it has
ended up in some of these museums. If you measure them even in terms of
financial economic benefits to the Benin people, how much is it? In some
instances it may not apply because, as others argue, even if it were
compensation, who would it go back to? Will it go back to the community, for
who are the community? Will it go back to the royalty, for who are the royalty?
Will it go back to the government and how will it trickle down there? So the
issue is that we must engage in this. We cannot run away by claiming that we
are a superior status or that we don’t want to talk. If we can start to engage
in a discussion we will probably come to an understanding whereby source
communities will be saying, ‘Now we understand. This case is so complex, that
this heritage is better preserved where it is’. But if we do not engage and
discuss with the [source communities], this problem will continue to be there,
because there are people also who are making money out of this. There are NGOs
who are paying so that they are in business, there are community members for
whom it is a business to continue to agitate for return. There are also people
who are genuine, who feel they have a genuine case that they need to be able to
discuss and agree on. So at the end of the day I think sitting down, talking,
negotiating, compromising and agreeing — ‘Ok, time has passed, you have had
this. We are transferring it in good will, on a permanent loan. Have them
because you have recognised that ideally these should have belonged to us.’
That is very simple because mentally and psychologically it also helps the
community. They know you have reached a compromise, that their ownership has
been accepted, symbolically, but physically things remain in the custody of the
institution that now owns it on behalf of the world. But you see this is what
we have never reached because most of the big institutions think that once they
accept that, there will be another big legal challenge, you know, ‘OK, now you
have accepted it, now we want it back.’ But if it is in good faith and negotiated
properly, this issue of the flood of returns will disappear. I don’t think this
is something that will last forever, but it is energized by the fact that big
institutions refuse to negotiate and refuse to accept responsibility even where
they have been wrong. You cannot win without dialogue, especially in terms of
heritage because people feel very attached to it at times and emotional about
it.

TF — Where do you stand on partage? As an
archaeologist, is it not a way of enabling archaeology to continue to take
place, for countries to collaborate on unearthing things and sharing them when
they’ve found them? Or do you think anything that is dug up in a country should
stay in that country?

GA — That is a very difficult question
because we have had some very bad experiences. For years I personally have
resisted the issue of sharing when it comes to commercial activities and this
applies much more to underwater archaeology which has been misused because you
have private companies with suspect archaeologists, you know, so-called
archaeologists, who go and negotiate with governments who don’t understand the
Convention and then you have officials who are corrupted for a few hundred
dollars and they give permits and people go into the sea within the territories
and get this material. In Africa there is a lot of problems with that. And they
say ‘Fifty percent’. But the fifty percent in the first place on what basis?
These are cultural materials. Their fifty percent is going to be sold
somewhere. And so you are turning archaeological material into a sellable
material. The second things is that the people who are digging here are people
from outside so when they say fifty percent, how do you know that is really
fifty percent? In most cases when you are told fifty percent, it is actually
one hundredth of what is found. I was educated at Cambridge and so I grew up in
a culture of cooperation; to me cooperation in the archaeological field is very
important. But that sharing was always in the sharing of the knowledge, not in
the sharing of the material, unless there was a request from an institution for
a particular object or set of objects where there were more and you did not
need all of them. In that case it should not be a problem. But I think the idea
of people ganging together to go the field to exploit it and then share it; to
me that has a risk, the risk that it becomes more of an occupation than the
pursuit of knowledge and the representation of humanity’s heritage. It becomes
like treasure hunting and if we can do away with the treasure hunting out of it
then I have no problem with governments or institutions sharing knowledge and information and sharing
material as long as it is clear and documented and everything is clean. But I’m
saying there must be clear policies and regulations and arguments as to how
this can be done. It must not be based on bureaucratic decisions taken at
government levels with people who could be compromised by giving them a hundred
dollars and then the fifty percent comes in.

The conclusion of this interview will be posted tomorrow.

December 5, 2012

Georges Abungu, Vice President of the
International Council of Museums (ICOM) was among delegates participating at
Forum d’Avignon, the international think-tank that convenes in the southern
French city every year to discuss urgent issues in the realms of culture,
media, digital innovation, and economics. London arts journalist Tom Flynn
spoke to Dr Abungu about museums, cultural heritage disputes, underwater
archaeology, and the role culture should play in the future development of
Africa.

TF — Dr Abungu, you were one of the few
museum specialists who dared to speak out against the ‘Declaration on the
Importance and Value of Universal Museums’ issued by the directors of European
and North American Encyclopedic Museums and which continues to be a source of
controversy as repatriation requests mount. How do you see the future of the
Encyclopedic Museum as it is currently being articulated by leading museum
directors?

GA — I’m very much a believer in
museums that are relevant to communities, museums that stimulate curiosity but
which also address human needs, that involve communities in the interpretation
of their collections. The model I am describing is divorced from the old notion
of the temple, it is a museum that is much more open to the public and to
questioning; it is a place the curator is not the holder of all the answers.
Now when you talk about Universal Museums, I have no problem with museum
directors branding their museums in whatever way they wish, but I felt that the
whole concept of the Universal Museum as it was being revived was not in good
faith. One of the intentions of the Declaration seemed to be to try and do away
with the discussions on the role of these collections, the positions of these
collections, on the ownership of these collections. So the driving force behind
that [Declaration] was to do away with questions that were emerging by branding
themselves as universal and above questioning. I think the intention was not
good, and that’s why I questioned it. And what about the other museums? What
are they? I can give some examples of
equally big museums that had big collections that were probably matching these
Universal ones. Why weren’t they not also universal? Why were we trying to
grade ourselves into different pedigrees? I thought it was going to bring
divisions between museums where some are going to be more important than
others. The word universal in this context struck a very bad kind of intention
when I heard it and that was why I was against it. I think the British Museum,
the Metropolitan Museum, the Louvre, and all these big museums, they have a
real role to play. They are wonders of the world and they have collections that
apply to humanity but I think there is no need to try to grade themselves as
much more superior than others and to degrade the others as not so important or
as universal as them. So that was an important principle — it was questioning
the intention and to me it was this hidden agenda that struck me very strongly.

Museums
are places of dialogue, places of questions, and some of this dialogue can
involve furious discussion, even on origins and acquisition policies and even
on thefts, and collections that might have suspect origins and I think this is
part of the richness of museums. I’ve seen this taking place. There have been
returns, there have been museums that originally had collections that were
questioned but some of these collections had been given by the source
communities to these museums on the condition that originally they belonged to
these communities and that they are now given on permanent loans or that they
are given as gifts. To me that is the way forward rather than re-branding and
segregating.

TF — Today, the requests by smaller nations
and source communities for repatriation of objects are often criticised by some
leading museum directors as a form of nationalism, on the grounds that all
cultures are essentially hybrid and “mongrel” and that those calling for return
are failing to understand the cosmopolitan nature of culture. What is your
response to that?

GA — Well, I’ve heard that argument and
I’ve written about returns and I’m one person who doesn’t believe in mass
returns. I don’t think it makes sense, especially for collections that have
been in these museums for hundreds of years. Unless they are human remains. In
those cases I really have no short cut. I think if the source communities want
them back, they should go back. But I believe that we should not shut doors and
claim that these cultural objects are cosmopolitan. They must have origins and
if those origins can be traced they must be returned to those places. There are
materials, of course, that have origins in Britain, others that have origins in
the USA, or in Germany, or in France, and if they can prove that, why not ask
for them? I think the same applies to other parts of the world, to Asia, to the
Pacific, to Australia, Africa, South America. The most important thing is not
to hide behind terminologies...the whole concept of urbanism, metropolitanism,
and all these things. The important thing is to sit down and create dialogue
with those who are claiming, and not to take cover under the big name of
Universality and then say ‘There are no more questions, we cannot discuss’.
However, I also believe this issue of calling for mass repatriation of
materials from museums taken from one place or another many years ago is also
irresponsible. I’ve always been very categorical when it comes to the
solutions. I think we need negotiation and ICOM has set up a structure where
people can negotiate and agree. I personally believe very much in permanent
loaning but I also believe that museums that have these collections, where
there are have arguments about them, or claims behind them, they need to sit
down and negotiate without dismissing these claims as cosmopolitan, as
cross-cultural, and that they cannot be discussed. They need to engage in
dialogue so that discussion can prevail at the end of the day. But as I’ve also
said, I don’t believe in mass transfer of material from museums back to source
communities just because they can show it was theirs... unless it is human
remains. With that one it becomes very tricky. And also certain religious
paraphernalia that can be proved to be still relevant to those particular
communities.

In the Fall 2012 issue of The Journal of Art Crime, editor-in-chief Noah Charney interviews Joshua Knelman, a journalist living in Canada who's first book, Hot Art, is about investigating stolen art. In it he profiles Don Hrycyk and follows the story of several heists and their subsequent investigations. Along the way he speaks with a number of ARCA staff and colleagues.

"We chatted with Joshua about his research and how he came to write this book," Noah introduces.

Here's the first question Noah Charney asks Joshua Knelman:

Which art theft do you discuss in your book and how did you choose those cases in particular? With over 50,000 reported art thefts per year worldwide, and with the Carabinieri databased packed with over 3 million stolen artworks, it must have been tough to choose where to focus.

I chose to focus on cases related to me by a wide range of sources, and followed the threads, hoping to identify criminal patterns. I was less interested in following one art theft case than in figuring out how art theft as a phenomenon works. So it wasn't a matter of one particular case. The book showcases a wide variety of art thefts ranging from blockbuster art heists, to art gallery smash and grabs, to the almost invisible plague of thefts from private residences. It was this last category which seemed to be less covered, but persuasive. When I began the book, I have to admit, I was hoping for a Thomas Crown Affair story I could follow, bu the reality turned out to be far more complex, and, to my mind, more interesting.

You may read the rest of this interview by subscribing to The Journal of Art Crime through the ARCA website.